AES E-Library

Reproducing Sound Fields Using MIMO Acoustic Channel Inversion

There are many ways to reproduce a sound field over a wide spatial area using an array of loudspeakers, as for example, wavefield synthesis (WFS), ambisonics, and spectral division methods. A new approach, called sound field reconstruction (SFR), optimally reproduces a desired sound field in a given listening area while keeping loudspeaker driver signals within physical constraints. The reproduction of a continuous sound field is represented as an inversion of the discrete acoustic channel from a loudspeaker array to a grid of control points. Extensive simulations comparing WFS, which is the state of the art, with SFR show that on average SFR provides better reproduction accuracy.